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Illuminating poetry since 1959

Posted on | Poetry

Day             Signs

by

Fishermen along the pier shuck a bucket of oysters. It's the first thing they'll eat today, the fruit. of splitting. Which resembles the desire to hold shape. I remember facing. The awning's half-shade, the rain just stopped. In the window I am a thin boy. Reflection is enough. To see through me: One ear smaller than the other. Light gauze keeping my head in place. Isn't this how change goes? One tense moves to another. I pull grass from the ground. And the rest stays green. This morning. The port was warm. But even then, muscadine, painfully blue—feigned like a version of my past. I laid down. The brittle came off. Nine swarms passed. Just before the storm. Fen ahead, the fronds bending west. How fair. Honestly. What birds.

Tianyi is a poet based in New York, from Hong Kong. His work can be found or is forthcoming in Poetry Daily, The New England Review, Copper Nickel, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and more.

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